Poetry Impact Quotes

The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry.

In Russia - Poets are considered a danger to the political system and are sent into Asylums. What a compliment to the Russian People, that poetry could move them so. In New Zealand, Poets are not considered a danger. No one reads poetry. Poets aren't sent to Asylums but they are considered mad nonetheless.

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.

Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

One of the most famous lines in contemporary Russian poetry is "Erica makes four copies and that's enough." That's the ethos we're aiming for. This is not to say I don't want lots of people to read my book, I do. I especially want people to read it who will feel better, and safer, or at least understood.

'In Memoriam' has been my companion for all my grownup life.

The number of people who read a poem is not as important as how the poem affects those who read it.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

Being Poet Laureate made me realize I was capable of a larger voice. There is a more public utterance I can make as a poet.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

One of poetry's great effects, through its emphasis upon feeling, association, music, and image - things we recognize and respond to even before we understand why - is to guide us toward the part of ourselves so deeply buried that it borders upon the collective.

I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet.

If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.

If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.

I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places.

A poem can have an impact, but you can't expect an audience to understand all the nuances.

Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture.

Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number of poems next to the number of political acts, it would be pretty slim.

For me, the power of the poetry in 'Milk and Honey' is the feeling you get after finished reading the poem. It's the emotion you feel once you've read the last word, and that is only possible when the diction is easy, and you don't get stuck on every other word, you don't know what the word means.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

A line is a fuse that's lit. The line smolders, the rhyme explodes— and by a stanza a city is blown to bits.

I was deeply moved by Richard Blanco's reading of his inaugural poem-a timely and elegant tribute to the great diversity of American experience. And now comes this fine meditation on his experience of coming to poetry, of making the poem and the months surrounding its making-a testament to the strength and significance of poetry in American culture, something not always seen or easily measured. Today Is For All of Us, One Today is a necessary intervention into the ongoing conversation about the role of poetry in public life.

It is enough for a poet to be the guilty conscience of his age.